Mumbai: Another colonial burden has been shed, this time by the men in khaki: they will no longer lumber around under the weight of the .303 and .410 rifles, which are relics of the late 18th century.
These hoary rifles were being used in drills until the other day and were also meant for regular policing. In 2014, the Bombay High Court had asked the state government to recast its weapons policy. While hearing a PIL, the court had observed that high-ranking officials had lost their lives in the 26/11 attacks as the weapons they possessed were not ‘appropriate’. The allusion was possibly to the .303 and .410 rifles.
“On February 10 a government order was passed announcing the change in the state’s weapons policy. The Mumbai police received the order recently,” said DCP Dhananjay Kulkarni. “These rifles will no longer be in use hereafter,” he added.
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Explaining why these rifles had to be jettisoned, Kulkarni said, “The bullet had to be laboriously loaded in these rifles after every shot, which made the entire exercise painstakingly time-consuming.’’
The rifles were accurate but difficult to cart around. ‘‘The .303 weighs four kg and is more than a metre in length. To compound matters, these rifles had to be fired from the shoulder. The .303 was also called Lee Enfield, since it was originally manufactured in Enfield in north London. Since the onset of World War I, it had been used in many flashpoints around the world, including the Indo-Pakistani wars, the Sino-Indian war, the Irish War of Independence and the Korean War.
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These were the rifles the Mumbai Police used to fend off the assailants of 26/11. After widespread criticism of the outdated weapons the police had been provided, these have been slowly phased out since 2009. Sophisticated and automatic weapons were introduced in the revamp.
The Mumbai Police had written many letters to the state and the central government asking them to either modify these rifles or give them to the NCC and other training centres. Finally, these rifles will land where they belong: a museum or a junkyard.
